Helping Professional Practice with Indigenous Peoples

The Bedouin-Arab Case

Alean Al-Krenawi and John R. Graham

Paperback

This book discusses issues helping professionals must confront when working with indigenous peoples, particularly the Bedouin Arab. Northern-based helping professional theory and methods have historically been aloof to the concerns within such societies as the Bedouin-Arab, particularly regarding their culture and religion, family structure and group orientation, and cultural and religious strategies for dealing with psychosocial problems. The literature has made some strides in making its myriad epistemologies less culturally oppressive but much remains to be done. According to the authors, it is essential for social welfare practitioners, structures, and Bedouin-Arab communities to integrate paradigms, which the helping professional carries out in practice methods and which could lead to the ongoing emergence of a newer social work epistemology, better anchored to the needs and realities of the Bedouin-Arab world.« lessmore »

Alean Al-Krenawi, Ph.D., is Chair of Spitzer Department of Social Work, Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Professor Al-Krenawi's research interests include multicultural mental-health and social work with indigenous populations. He conducts studies in Israel, Canada, Palestine and other Arab countries.

John R. Graham is Murray Fraser Professor of Community Economic Development at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary, Canada. Together, Al-Krenawi and Graham have published over 40 journal articles and have worked together for 15 years.

"Drs. Alean Al-Krenawi and John Graham have given us a book of considerable import to the helping professions. It is a book with a two-fold thrust. On the one hand, it presents a rich, fascinating, and incisive analysis of the struggle between the extant Bedouin culture and traditions and practices of western helping methods. And secondly, of perhaps greater import, is the important contribution the work makes in demonstrating to us the complexities of cultural differences and the necessity of our seeking always to understand the cultural roots of our clients, and how what we do fits or does not fit in seeking a positive outcome for our interventions…"— Frank Turner, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

"…This book is a major leap forward for social work and the helping professions, both in culturally specific understanding for a particular context and in convincing arguments for localized, indigenous, and culturally astute approaches to social work around the world."— Ed Canda, Professor, School of Social Welfare, University of Kansas

"…Al-Krenawi and Graham's new book is an essential contribution to the area of Cultural Mental Health. This is a scholarly as well as practical work about the helping profession on the Arab and Bedouin culture and there is very little professional material on the topic. An important, significant book to the area of ethnicity and mental health."— Prof. Eliezer Witzum, M.D., Ven-Gurion University of the Negev